UMMMM NENJIN, hate to burst your idealogical bubble, but OBAMA is threatening to not pay the soldiers. No one else. It is his pettiness that underlays that. Normally, in a shutdown, the military does still get paid. Just saying.
I hate to burst your bubble, but without the ability to borrow the government can't pay hardly anything. They can't borrow at all until a budget is finalized. Of course Republicans wanted to write a bill specifically allocating funding for soldiers during a budget crisis, it's the weakest point of their whole resistance to coming to any sort of agreement.
Let's skip soldiers though. Let's go with the 800,000 Federal employees, every day people, who won't be getting paid. They're not part of his inner circle and "cronies", they're average people who earn a pay check for doing a job they were hired to do. The Tea Party supporting shutdown is supporting putting them out of a job too. I imagine some of those folks even vote Republican. Your'e also shutting down their support network, you know, unemployment. So in one stroke they've lost their job and, until the budget is resolved, a foundation of support for the American worker when things go bad.
Holding anyone's paycheck hostage for political purposes is wrong, and a waste of time and effort by everyone involved. Just pass a damn budget, and score some political victory points for holding out to the 13th hour. Ironically, the people who stand to lose the least from this are the people who don't depend on a paycheck or government services. That includes Democrats and Republicans.
Feel free to dredge up when Democrats have done similar things. I'm not defending that either. But the "just burn it all down" attitude of the shutdown isn't productive. It's just wasteful political drama. Money isn't being saved by doing this. Tax revenue will barely hold up essential operations.
The way I see this, and I am sure I will be the most unpopular person for saying it, is that the Democrats and Obama have a gun to the head of America demanding money for their cronies (GM SEIU, AFL-CIO, etc etc etc etc etc ect) like some back alley thug and the Republicans care simplying trying to keep us all from being robbed. Yeah, I know, that doesnt fit with the DF Forums acceptable narrative and tone.
You can easily flip the same thing to be said of Republicans. They've got an equal 50% responsibility and ability to say "ok, let's find a solution."
He's saying the democrats are holding the country hostage by not passing the budget, and the republicans are trying to stop them and their dastardly unions that try to help out the poor-middle class.
Amusing in that it's actually the exact opposite of what's happening (the democrats are actually at about the same amount of money cut as the republics are right now, but the republicans refuse to accept it due to the fact that that they are trying to get things passed in the budget that has very little to do with the actual budjet, for instance they are insisting planned parenthood doesn't get any funding, and are trying to strip the EPA of its power) and what's happened in the past (eg. republicans refusing to let anything pass till rich people got their tax breaks).
Cheers, I'm fluent in rhetoric, and I've been following the state of the budget negotiations so I know the actual difference in proposed budgets amount to a tiny fraction of the last budget. I appreciate the translation though.
The actual budget isn't what's at stake though. It's partly the long-term budget mindset and of course the 2012 elections. I've been alive long enough to remember the last time a government shutdown was the big drama, back in the Bush Administration and the Clinton Administration. It's just another tool for political control, and it happens to be in the hands of Republicans this time around. Except until now, no one was felt it was necessary to push it to the point where they start putting people out of work.
It just ticks me off that the Freshmen, and in turn the vulnerable Republican party, are being so cavalier with a lot of people's livelihoods. That makes me feel soooo much better about the prospect of them having the reigns.
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Topic: Government Shutdown... TV says it's bad. Is it? (Read 23612 times)